Linda’s Vespa was brand-new, so some pre-mission upgrades naturally had to be made, specifically the brake lights and forward running lights. We’d be moving at night and I wanted (1) the scooter to be as conspicuous as possible in the dark, and (2) more lighting for the road ahead.

That meant more mail-order stuff from scooterwest.com and clearing out my tiny workshop¹ at Starbase 8 to wedge the Vespa inside. It also required protecting the scoot from our curious cats² by covering it with enough old towels to resemble a ghost in a Bowery Boys movie.

I’d upwired enough accessories on her 2010 Vespa for bad memories to linger. I find Italian scoots rather difficult to work on, with tight spaces and overly complex hardware.

The headache started after the AdMore light bar arrived; the wiring harness was too short for our model and I had to order a two-foot extension. And then I had to learn how to solder the wires³ together.

But, over a few days, I eventually figured it out, got all the lights and bodywork installed, and felt better afterwards. I finally wheeled the Vespa out of the workshop, leaving a space that reminded me of the Time Machine’s departure⁴:

The Time Traveller was not there. I seemed to see a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black and brass for a moment — a figure so transparent that the bench behind with its sheets of drawings was absolutely distinct; but this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The Time Machine had gone.

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1 – About 7 feet wide x 14 feet deep, I reckon, or roughly the size of three phone booths combined.

2 – Lexi, especially. He’s the black-and-white cat we rescued from the Dollar General in Ohio in 2008 while traveling aboard Endurance. He’s developed an affinity for lounging on the saddles of all our motorcycles and scooters.

3 – The harness contained six wires, all 26-gauge, which is pretty thin and challenging to work with. I had to get a proper soldering iron, the correct 60-40 lead/tin solder, paste and heat-shrink tubing, and watch about 400 YouTube videos to learn how to do it.

4 – From the 1895 H.G. Wells novel, The Time Machine. The narrator reaches the workshop just in time to see the machine vanish, leaving a poignant space behind.